Seventeen
The enemy did not pursue us. No doubt Rhiwallon’s death had shaken them, and left them without the stomach for a long chase. It was small relief. Our raiding-army — the one that not much more than a week ago had ridden to war dreaming of blood and of glory — was all but shattered. Of the five hundred with which I’d begun that day, less than half now remained. Nor had Earl Hugues’s host fared any better, as I saw when eventually we caught up with him. He’d left Scrobbesburh at the head of fifteen hundred fighting men, but whereas his spearnen were still for the most part fresh, having never had the chance to face the enemy, easily half his knights — his best fighters — now lay dead.
In all it was a sorry band of warriors that we were left with: spent, bruised and broken, in spirit if not in body; limping, leaning on the hafts of their spears and shoulders of their friends for support; their faces smeared with dirt, their tunics soaked in vomit and their trews reeking of piss and shit. Many were grievously wounded, soon to leave this world for whatever fate awaited them beyond, comforted in their final moments by their companions.
Among those left behind was Turold. He had clung to life as long as he could, they said, but the spear that had pierced his side had been driven deep, and the wound was too severe. His final breath had left his lips moments after he had been dragged from the fray.
‘He was a good fighter,’ Serlo said once the priest had left us. The big man was not usually one to show his emotion, but I saw the lump in his throat as he swallowed.
Pons’s head was bowed towards the ground. ‘A good fighter,’ he echoed, more solemnly than I had ever heard him speak. ‘And a good friend.’
I nodded silently; there was nothing more I could add. Turold had been the first of my knights to enter my service, mere days after Lord Robert had granted me Earnford. The only son of a wine merchant from Rudum, when I met him he had been begging outside the alehouses of Lundene, having been cast out by his drunkard of a father not long before. Three boys his age had taken a dislike to him for whatever reason: perhaps he had insulted them, or else they were simply looking for a fight, for they had set upon him. For a while he held them off, wrestling one to the ground, biting the arm of another and kneeing him in the groin, and bloodying the nose of the third. Eventually, however, they got the better of him, and he was pinned against the wall. Had I not frightened them away then he would probably have ended up with broken bones, or worse. Still, for one who had never had any training he had proven himself a ferocious fighter, and I saw that his youthful appearance belied a quick temper and a stout heart.
Perhaps it was because I was sorry for him, or because he reminded me in some small way of myself at that age, but I took him in. It was often said among men of noble birth that if a boy had never ridden a horse or begun to practise sword- and spearcraft by the age of twelve, then he was fit only to be a priest. That said, I was into my fourteenth summer when I started on that path, and things had not turned out badly for me. Turold was seventeen, he reckoned, though he did not know exactly. Despite that he was a sturdier lad than I had been, and already a talented horseman, with a natural affinity for the animals: a more accomplished rider, in fact, than many men twice his age. Eager to learn and to please, he spent hours each day in the training yard, practising his cuts and strokes at the pell. Within months he was using the skills he had learnt on the Welsh bands who came raiding across the dyke.
It all seemed so long ago. In fact I had known Turold little more than a year, hard though that was to believe; it felt like much longer. But while Pons and Serlo both seemed to take his death hard, I could feel only numbness.
Our host finally halted some hours later. Thankfully there had been no sign of enemy scouts following us, and so we had some respite while we decided what to do next. Still, we were in a low-lying position in open farmland that afforded little protection; the only reason we had stopped was because so many were collapsing from exhaustion. The sooner we could move from here, the better.
I went to seek out the black-and-gold banner. Lord Robert and his knights had survived for the most part with little more than cuts and grazes, together with a few broken teeth. Nonetheless, they were decidedly fewer than when I had last seen them in Scrobbesburh.
Several of the men fixed me with cold stares and spat on the ground when I approached.
‘You,’ one said, rising to block my way. Broad-shouldered and brusque in manner, I recognised him for Ansculf, the captain of Robert’s household. ‘What do you want, Tancred?’
We had met several times, the first of those being a year earlier. I had not liked him much then, and I liked him even less now. As always a thick smell of cattle dung clung to him, though I had never worked out why that was. He was some years older than myself, and he resented me, as he resented Eudo and Wace, for having been rewarded so generously after Eoferwic while he still remained landless, without the honour that a manor of his own would give him. This I knew because he had told me as much on more than one occasion.
‘I want to speak with Robert,’ I said. ‘Let me pass.’
‘You’re not welcome here. It’s because of you that Urse, Adso, Tescelin and the others lie dead.’
I bridled at his tone. Of those three names only the first was familiar, and I tried to remember which one Urse was; after a moment his round, piggish face rose to mind.
‘Because of me? What do you mean?’
‘Leave him, Ansculf,’ called Lord Robert. He strode towards me, his expression tired and hollow. ‘I will speak with him myself.’
But Ansculf was not going to back down readily. ‘Lord, this man-’
‘Enough,’ Robert said sharply. ‘Tancred, come with me.’
I followed him until we were out of easy earshot of his knights, although they kept casting sneering glances in my direction and I could still catch parts of their conversation. They spoke loudly of how my mother was a whore and the daughter of a whore besides, and how they had heard that I preferred the company of men to women: all of it doubtless meant for my ears, to provoke me.
‘They are angry,’ Robert said dismissively. ‘Their sword-brothers are dead and they need someone they can blame.’
‘Then they should blame the men who struck the blows that sent them to their graves,’ I said. ‘What do their deaths have to do with me?’
The words came out more petulantly than I had meant them, and I saw that they had stung Robert. For a moment he looked as though he were about to turn on me, but after a moment’s hesitation he simply shook his head.
We kept walking until we had come to the wolf banner, which had been planted in the ground at the edge of one of the pasture fields. An audience had gathered around Hugues d’Avranches by the time we arrived, and among them I recognised many of the barons who had been there in the hall at Scrobbesburh, their faces red with anger as the young earl tried to shout them down, demanding order.
They fell silent as I approached, and one by one turned to fix their gazes upon me.
‘At last he decides to show his face,’ one of them called. ‘The Breton for whom so much Norman blood has been spilt.’
I felt as though I were on trial, accused of some misdemeanour of which I remained ignorant.